


By the hand

by stateofintegrity



Category: MASH (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-08-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:07:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25860322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stateofintegrity/pseuds/stateofintegrity
Summary: One of Klinger's jobs is to help exhausted surgeons find their way back home.
Relationships: Maxwell Klinger/Charles Emerson Winchester III
Comments: 11
Kudos: 13





	By the hand

One of Klinger’s jobs while on duty in the OR was to lead exhausted personnel back to their beds. Depending on the length and nature of the relationship, he sometimes even helped them out of their bloodied garb and into fresh clothes. He had tucked covers around Colonel Potter and guided Margaret’s feet into her fuzzy slippers.

Tonight, he saw that Potter was intent on remaining at the duty desk. Pierce and Hunnicutt made a single, tangled unit, lurching toward coffee. Good. That just left Charles. Exhaustion, Klinger knew, rendered Boston’s favored son docile, so he simply walked up, grabbed his arm and steered.

Full dark reigned over the camp, but Klinger was sure-footed even in women’s shoes, leading Charles around gouges dug into the road by carts and craters left over from mines which had bounced devilishly into camp. When they came to a stop, Winchester was practically asleep on his feet; his eyes only came open when Klinger submerged his hand in warm water up to the wrist.

“What-what are you doing?” he asked as the smell of eucalyptus and menthol entered his nose in a reviving bouquet.

Klinger just held his hand down a moment more before removing it and massaging between each knuckle. “Want me to stop?”

He didn’t, but, “I don’t understand.”

Klinger worked around each fingertip, pressed into his palm, and started on his wrist. “I saw you wincing in there.” He dried one hand to begin on the next. “You don’t want to lose your touch, Major.”

What was quickly becoming apparent to Winchester however was that it was Klinger’s touch he wanted to hold onto.

“Why are you doing this? Do you... I mean this must be something you do for all the doctors, correct?”

Klinger’s thumb worked the area between his thumb and forefinger. “Well, don’t get offended, Major, but it isn’t, actually. It’s something I do for myself sometimes, though. Carrying those litters is murder on my wrists.”

This was a lot of conversation for Winchester’s sleep-deprived brain to absorb. “Why would I take offense at such kindness?”  _ Do you - does  _ **_everyone_ ** _ here - think so very little of m _ e?

“I didn’t want you to take it wrong. Like I thought you weren’t as tough as the other doctors or something.” He shot him a knowing little look. “You do have your pride, Major.”

“I’m a Winchester.”

“You’ve said.”

Did the man - this cross-dressing Corporal whose existence he had barely ever even registered - sound fond of him? He hadn’t heard those notes in anyone’s voice since Honoria’s last recorded missive. It felt every bit as good as the massage did. As for that, Winchester was surprised to find his fingers stretching, reaching after Klinger’s touch. It was all quite intimate and sweet and strange- and he probably wouldn’t have permitted a moment of it if he hadn’t been too tired to see straight.

As efficiently as if he was at the start of his shift, Klinger dried his hands. “Let’s get you back to the Swamp, huh Major? You’re starting to sway on your feet.”

Charles allowed himself to be led again. At the door to the Swamp, he felt his hands tingling, missing the strength in Klinger’s touch. “Thank you, Corporal.”

“Just doing my job, Major. Get some rest.”

Charles slept better than he had in weeks.

***

The next time surgery went long, Charles ended the night in the scrub room, slumping down on the wooden bench. He was actually quite alert, but he’d felt Klinger’s eyes on him. Just as he’d hoped, the Corporal appeared to lead him back.

“C’mon, Major. You try to sleep here and you’ll wreck your back.”

Charles thought of asking him if he’d massage that too. “Just give me a minute, Corporal. I’m in no hurry to be serenaded to sleep by Pierce and Hunnicutt’s version of humor and clinking glasses of gin.”

Klinger answered with a sleepy, casual salute. “I can respect that, sir.” He sank down across from him. “They’re unique, those two.” He yawned enormously.

Charles smiled; this from a man with a truly exquisite collection of handbags (not everyone could pull off paste gems, after all). “Yes, and you are dead on your feet. Go to bed. You don’t have to wait on me.”

“It’s my job, Major. Hafta make sure you don’t trip and break a wrist or something. Colonel’s orders.”

Charles felt an unexpected flash of self-pity; he was valued here for his surgical skill alone; if the army could have drafted just his hands, they would have done so and his colleagues would have been all the happier for it.

“I, too, can give orders,” he reminded the Corporal.

Klinger looked more alert. “You haven’t sounded like that in awhile,” he said and the sheer familiarity of his tone and his gaze - he wasn’t, in that moment, a Corporal addressing a Major - alarmed Winchester.

“What, pray tell, do I sound like, exactly?”

“Like you’re walled off. Separate from everybody else. Thought you were done with that, Major.” Seeing Winchester’s surprise at being read this way, he smiled. “Going to tell me that you’ll overlook my ‘insubordination’ because it’s so late?”

They were precisely the words he’d intended to use. He looked hard at Klinger, trying to make past perceptions match present reality. “How did you...?”

“It doesn’t matter.” He noticed, then, a stain on the edge of his skirt and rubbed at it absently.

“Can you get it out?”

It surprised him, Winchester asking after his wardrobe. “Sure. Nothing feels broken in, here, until I’ve had to soak it to get the blood out. This goes clear through to the skin, though. Funny I didn’t notice it at the time.” He yawned again. “Hafta shower. One nice thing - there’s usually warm water, this late.”

Then Charles surprised him a second time. He stood and offered his arm. “Let me walk you over for a change.”

“Alright.” They shuffled slowly - they were both worn out - and they averted their eyes from one another until they were separated by a shower stall. Dried blood sluiced from his skin, Klinger chanced to ask, “So why’d you go into your blue blood routine back there? What upset you?”

Winchester lifted a brow at this. “You have routines, Corporal- complete with costumes. I was just being myself.”

“A version of yourself, maybe,” Klinger conceded. “But you change the way you talk when something bothers you. I just want to know what I said.”

For the second time in minutes, Charles was gently staggered to find that Klinger knew him better than he thought - indeed, may know him better than anyone at the 4077th. How was that possible? When he thought of Klinger, he didn’t exactly think of a deeply analytical mind. Had he misjudged? “You mentioned Colonel Potter,” he said slowly. “I sometimes feel, ah, that is... It’s clear the Colonel values Pierce and Hunnicutt not just as surgeons, but as friends. As men. He values me, if he does, only for the work that I do.”

Klinger smiled at him. “You have kinda fought him tooth and nail since you got here. And you do that walled-off thing sometimes. People around here are scared and exhausted, Major. Making them climb in order to get to you is asking a lot.”

There was a literal wall between them at that moment, the flimsy wood of the shower stall. “Corporal, do you have climbing shoes among your wardrobe?”

Klinger’s eyes sparkled. “Never needed them, sir. Around you, I just make sure to wear really high heels.”

***

The next time Klinger came to get him, the superior-sounding surgeon actually smiled. He’d come to look forward to the Corporal’s company on these late night walks and Klinger had all but admitted that he, at least, was willing to make an effort to value him as a person rather than a profession. In turn, he had begun to pay attention to Klinger. When the clerk became so excited about his latest designs that he held forth in the mess tent (winning a stream of jokes from Pierce, usually), Charles rested his head in his hand and listened. He paid attention to stitching and to earrings and complimented the winning combinations Klinger created. He also worried. Klinger already rotated through guard duty, KP, and work in the OR. If he sewed in his off hours, when did he sleep? 

His concern led him to Colonel Potter’s office. To his credit, despite the fact that Winchester had been a royal pain in the keister since arriving, Potter heard him out respectfully. When he’d finished, he asked, “This isn’t some sort of shorting Peter to pay Paul sort of scam, is it, Major?”

“I don’t take your meaning, sir.”

“Klinger’s a dab hand at scheming and he’s far from immune to the sound of clinking coins. If you’re getting him out of one duty to put him to your own use, I won’t okay it.”

“Nothing of the sort! I merely brought this matter to your attention out of concern. He’s the last one to leave OR, and he usually goes on to another task after that. The rest of us get to seek some form of repose. Surely another corpsman, one with fewer duties, could take his place on KP.”

“I agree with you, Winchester. And you wear it well, you know. Better than you wore that chip on your shoulder.”

“Colonel?”

“Stepping up to help someone else. It’s a good look for you.” 

He made the only reasonable answer he could. “Thank you, sir.”

***

A few nights later, Winchester looked across the compound and saw the lights burning in Klinger’s tent. He shook his head and went back to reading, but the light kept catching his eyes and dragging his head up. He tossed the book down. 

He knocked at the door to Klinger’s tent. Dressed in his pink robe, the Corporal poked his head out, confusion giving way to a smile when he recognized his visitor. It was such a guileless smile, Charles reflected, rising so easily- and it was Klinger’s natural state. He envied the man. “I got you off of KP so that you’d start sleeping,” Charles said in lieu of a greeting and without preamble. 

Klinger’s dark eyes went wide with surprise that quickly metamorphosed into delight. “That was you, Major?” 

_ Damn.  _ “Yes.” 

“Why?”

Charles sighed. He was not the sort of man who felt at ease with his emotions. “I… you  _ do  _ too much. Clerking, the hospital, guard duty… it’s more than you should have to shoulder, especially given how frightened this place makes you. You tended to my hands when they cramped up after operating. It seemed only right I free yours from some of those burdens. But you need to rest, Maxwell, for this free time to have any worth.” 

Klinger’s eyes shined. “It already does - to me. Nobody else here has ever stood up for me, Major, or watched out for me. Thanks.” 

“You’re welcome. Now go to bed.” 

Klinger teasingly saluted him. “Yes, sir.” 

Charles rolled his eyes. “I don’t want a symbol neither one of us puts any stock in, Klinger. I want you to rest.” 

Klinger rolled up the dress he’d been working on; he could see that Winchester wasn’t going to permit him to go back to adding sequins to the bodice. “I’m going, I’m going. What are you gonna do, watch me sleep?” 

“Tuck you in, rather. Don’t look at me like that. I have a younger sister, so I do know how.” 

Klinger hadn’t been exaggerating when he’d said no one looked after him in Korea; though he felt this behavior was out of character for Winchester, he didn’t want to miss out. Trying not to smile too broadly at the strange silliness of the situation, Klinger laid down and let himself be tended to by the taller, wealthier, better educated and higher ranking surgeon. And it turned out that Charles clearly hadn’t been joking about caring for his sister; he arranged Klinger’s mismatched coverings with care, tucking the edges around his toes. Klinger ducked his head at one point, tickled by the attention and hoping to keep his amusement off of his face. 

When he looked up again, the light from the remaining lantern fell across the Major’s shoulders. “Thank you, Charles.” 

“Sleep well, Max.”

***

The next time that surgery got really bad, Klinger stuck around. 

“It’s two o’clock in the afternoon,” Charles informed him when he saw him waiting. “If I cannot manage the walk to my tent in broad daylight unassisted, something is amiss.” 

Klinger fell in beside him, refusing to be so easily dismissed. “It was ugly in there, Major.” 

“We all knew there was little chance. If there had been more casualties, we would not have even made the attempt. I am not upset, Klinger, and that may be the strangest and upsetting lesson this place has conferred upon me: I have learned to watch the light go out of a man’s eyes, shrug, note the time, and turn away.” 

“No you haven’t.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“If that was true, you wouldn’t be back behind those walls of yours again, but you are. I can hear it in your voice, Major.”

Winchester sighed, feeling brittle. “You’re not wearing heels, I take it?”

Klinger was glad he was joking a little, worn out as he sounded. “I’ve got a pile in my tent. Wanna visit? I can work on your hands again.” 

“I fear I’ll be rather bad company,” he admitted. 

“If you are, I’ll kick you out,” Klinger assured him, shining eyes showing that he didn’t mean it. “Come on. I have these glittery silvery things that lace up my ankles and no one’s said anything nice about them yet. And I have tea.” 

Winchester followed. Stranger, perhaps, than calling for a corpsman to bear a body away from his table (lost, lost, a failure) was watching Klinger sit a kettle (cheap tin, not porcelain like his own) atop the stove. There was a burst of lemon and orange as he added the tea, then he turned away to dress. (OR had a way of spattering everything with fine red droplets; even if you didn’t know they were there, it was best to ditch your clothes. Seeing them unexpectedly had a way of inducing dizziness and nausea). When he turned back, he wore a house dress and the promised heels. Charles smiled at the sight of them. 

“They are lovely. Your best colors are the classic ones.” 

“For that you can stay as long as you like.” 

“I didn’t know you were so moved by flattery,” he said, accepting the cup Klinger placed in his hand. 

“Try flattering me once in awhile,” Klinger joked, folding one ankle across the other in a demure gesture Charles had witnessed from debutantes. 

It was the type of invitation he was unaccustomed to receiving and he wished he could tell if Klinger wanted  _ his  _ flattery or flattery in general. Then he decided it didn’t matter; anyone willing to massage the pain from his hands in the middle of the night deserved kind words. 

“I think,” he began, uncertain and unaccustomed to what he was undertaking. “I think that you should be so much more exhausted than I… yet you are endlessly kind. There is a light in you that never goes out. A warmth that never runs out. I… I find myself wishing to tell you that you should not waste these kindnesses on me, but I would miss it too much if you ceased.” 

Klinger had sat aside his own cup and was staring. “Major, did I just hear you say that you don’t want to give  _ me  _ up?” 

Charles held out a hand. Klinger took it, but his grip was light, uncertain. “The first time you touched my hands … Max, I didn’t want to let go  _ then _ . It seems impossible that you should be here at all. It feels impossible that you can be…” he gestured, words failing, “all that you are. How could I see you and  _ not _ try to keep you?” 

“No one else has ever wanted to, sir. And you’re a Major - and rich. Educated. You sure saddling yourself with me is one of your better ideas?” 

Charles laughed. “I have heard you make better pitches for fruit cocktail than for yourself, Max. I am certain that joining your life with mine is not only a wonderful idea- it may be the best one I’ve ever had. Please, say you’ll think about it, won’t you?” 

Max nodded at that - what else could he do? - then gawked as Charles left him to do just that. 

When they fell in the next morning at reveille, a smaller hand - nails painted bridal veil white, was placed in Charles’ own. He squeezed it once - promising everything he had and was - and Klinger squeezed back. “Yours,” he mouthed, smile fluttering, impossible to conceal. 

“Forever,” Charles promised. 

End! 


End file.
